Yes, you read that right. The plant-eating dinosaur species
has been discovered in Mashonaland Central province’s Mbire district.
The almost complete skeleton is now at the Natural History
Museum in Bulawayo.
Scientists began working on the Pebbly Arkose Formation in
northern Zimbabwe in 2017. After five years of careful excavations which were
disrupted by the outbreak of Covid-19, they have finally unveiled the dig’s
star specimen: Mbiresaurus raathi, a nearly complete skeleton named after
“Mbire,” the Shona dynasty that once ruled the region.
The species name honours Michael Raath, who helped discover
the first fossils in the area.
At roughly 230 million years old, the specimen is on par
with the oldest dinosaurs ever found. It remains the oldest dinosaur to be
discovered in Africa to date.
The mbiresaurus lived during the late Triassic period (252
million to 201 million years ago) along the banks of an ancient river in what
would become Zimbabwe. It was a rich ecosystem, filled with more than just
dinosaurs. The excavation unearthed numerous protomammals known as cynodonts as
well as armoured crocodilians, bizarre beaked reptiles called rhynchosaurs and
even evidence of an early meat-eating dinosaur.
Christopher Griffin, a Paleontologist at Yale University,
this reporter that the discovery fills in the gaps in the understanding of
dinosaurs.
“The discovery of Mbiresaurus Raathi fills in a critical
geographic gap in the fossil record of the oldest dinosaurs and shows the power
of hypothesis driven fieldwork for testing predictions about the ancient past.”
The creature stood at least a metre tall, ran on two legs,
weighed around 30 kilogrammes and had a long neck. The fact that it lived in
the Carnian stage of the late Triassic period makes this discovery extremely
rare.
“These are Africa’s
oldest known definitive dinosaurs roughly equivalent in age to the oldest
dinosaurs found anywhere in the world.
“It was extremely exciting as soon as I knew what we had
found, I had to sit down and breathe for a minute to calm down,” added Griffin.
The excavation of the main skeleton of Mbiresaurus took
weeks to complete.
“For the main Skeleton of Mbiresaurus, it took about four
days to excavate the skeleton. But we spent several weeks excavating the
fossils in the area, they are extremely abundant there,” said Griffin.
He said since the bones have been buried for millions of
years, the chance of getting a full skeleton is rare. “Since the bones
themselves are from a new rare species of dinosaur the bones themselves will
not be mounted, but we are hoping to create exact copies of the bones.”
Michel Zondo, the Fossil curator at the Natural History
Museum of Zimbabwe, revealed that the fossils are in Bulawayo at the Natural
History Museum. “It inspires a great feeling. These things are very rare, so if
you happen to make such a discovery it does really feel very good and it
contributes a lot to the Paleontological science in Zimbabwe and the entire
world,” said Zondo. Chronicle
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